The present invention relates to a control gate for an outlet of a card or substrate storage hopper used with a card printer or other card processing instrument, which can handle a wide range of card thicknesses.
Printers for ID cards and like substrates that will accept different cards or substrates have been advanced. These card printers require card feeders that can reliably handle the different sized cards and feed them to the printer. Most card feeders include a hopper for holding a supply of cards and a rigid gate having an edge that defines an outlet opening through which the cards are ideally fed individually. Problems can arise when the outlet opening is not matched to the thickness of the card being feed. For example, if the outlet opening is too large, double feeds of thin cards can occur. Similarly, if the outlet opening is too small, misfeeds of thick cards can occur.
One solution to the problem is to provide a card feeder that has a control gate that allows an operator to control the height of the outlet opening in accordance with the type of card being fed. Although, the adjustable gate provides the ability to feed different card types (i.e., cards having different thicknesses), it typically must be adjusted each time the card type is changed. Additionally, this type of gate can encounter feeding problems caused by warped cards that are bowed up or down resulting in a change in the effective thickness of the card relative to a flat card.
It would be desirable to have a control gate of a card hopper that is adapted to handle a range of card thicknesses including warped cards without requiring adjustment to the position of the control gate.
The present invention relates to a card hopper that includes a control gate that allows cards of varying thicknesses to be fed individually through an output opening of the hopper without adjustment. The hopper is configured to hold a stack of plastic cards or similar, fairly rigid, substrates. The control gate is positioned at the outlet opening and includes a flexible blade that reduces a height of the outlet opening to less than a thickness of an end card, whereby the flexible blade flexes in response to the end card when driven through the outlet opening.
The present invention is also directed to a card feeder that includes the above-described hopper as well as a card drive for urging an end card of the stack through the outlet opening.